Just Between Us
by Kyo-chan
Summary: From "8 Ways to Say I Love You", number 7 reads: "Wait until something terrible has happened and you can't not tell her anymore. Wait until she almost gets hit by a car crossing Wabash against the light and after you are done cursing at the shit-for-brains cab drivers in this city, realize you are actually just terrified of living without her. Tell her with your hands shaking."


They were alone.

After the endless stream of medics and concerned subordinates, the room had finally gone quiet. Roy didn't even know what time of day it was, his world plunged forever into darkness, rendering time completely irrelevant to him for the moment. All he knew was that they were finally alone and the silence roared in his ears to accompany his heart thrumming in his chest like something trapped. Suddenly, he wanted the distractions, the sounds of voices and footsteps, a reassuring clap on the shoulder or even the prod of an impersonal nurse. In the quiet and the darkness, all he could do was remember.

And he couldn't tell if it was his imagination, but Roy remembered things in far more vivid detail than he thought they actually happened. Hawkeye's blood was a brighter red, her voice more wet and choked when she said she was told not to die. Had he actually thought for a moment he would have done what they wanted to try and get her back? No, he told himself. He knew it wouldn't have worked. Deep down in his rational mind, he knew it wouldn't have worked, just like he knew it back when Hughes died. And when he cycled back to that loss in his life, the silence just got louder and his thoughts more tangled. He lay against the pillows, trying to remember what he'd told Maes last, and for all the clarity of the last things he'd seen with his own eyes on Promised Day, he couldn't recall those words. And it did something to him inside that he didn't like.

The silence was broken by a rustle of movement near to him, and he found himself holding his breath, finally focusing. He could hear her breathing, linens moving over her, and his chest only got tighter. Now he was remembering Riza in his arms, for once not caring who saw them or who knew how much he cared about her. If the world was going to end that day, if they would truly be lost, what did it matter how tightly he held her? With his face pressed into her tangled hair, he could still smell her simple sweetness, that which was Riza underneath gunpowder, smoke and blood. He'd been trapped by his helplessness and there was no time to reassure either of them that her survival was permanent; everything had gone to shit even moments after that. The movements and noise didn't stop for hours after countless hours, the time becoming distorted after his sight was lost and Father literally turned the entire world upside down. On and on in constant motion and chaos.

Until now.

Now, the chaos was all inside of him. But his focus could be so easily grabbed by a simple shift of her body in the bed nearby. The cadence of her slightly labored breath.

"Sir, are you awake?"

Roy froze, and he almost didn't answer, as if doing so would betray how much he had been thinking, how the fear was creeping up on him. But if he was 'asleep', she would stop talking, and hearing her was all he had to fall back on now that he couldn't see himself that she was all right.

"Yes." It was all he could get out, and his throat was dry, but he didn't think water was going to change that.

Riza didn't answer him after that, not for a long time, and he wondered what she could be thinking. Surely, her opinion of him hadn't changed because he couldn't see. What kind of leader couldn't even look at the path ahead? What kind of leader would he be when his sight would never return, and the military would discharge him? How much meaning would following him have then? God, it made his stomach turn, and he squeezed his useless eyes shut against the next maelstrom of his own thoughts in the resulting silence.

Fingertips touched Roy's face, and he sucked in his breath sharply. The touch flinched back, and he regretted the reaction instantly. They were the only two people in the room, but he'd been so wrapped up in his cyclical thoughts that he hadn't heard Riza move toward him. Now that she was here, and he could _hear _how she breathed, feel her skin against his, he felt something that was too close to panic for his comfort. His hands tangled in his sheets, fisted to try and control how they shook. _Please don't go._ "Lieutentant?" _I almost lost you._

"Please excuse my behavior, Sir," she said, and for the first time that he could remember, her words were rushed, as if she'd forced them out of herself.

Roy braced himself. He hated that, he was fucking _braced_ as if something terrible were coming. She was asking him to excuse whatever she was about to say or do. It was over, everything was over. He hadn't lost her, but he was going to _lose_ her, and he didn't know what he was going to do with himself if she was the one to leave him behind. He wasn't going to just fade away and—

Riza kissed him.

The floodgates broke. One of his shaking hands reached, missed, then finally found her shoulder. His breath locked up in his chest and his heart practically stopped before it began racing even faster. Her hair was soft against the parts of his hand that weren't bandaged, and he never wanted to card his fingers through the soft strands so much in his life. He wanted to pull her against him and never let go, memorize her skin, taste her breath, memorize the feel of her mouth on his so he would never forget. He wanted moments, hours, days, _years_ with her because there was no one else in the world who understood him the way she did. No one else knew their language of exchanged glances, specific cadences of voice and subtle movements of busy hands. Fuck, he would be lost without her, and he was lost _now_. He couldn't envision a life without her in it, and it shook him to the bone to try.

She pulled back, only for breath, only a whisper of space, and it came out of him.

"I love you."

Now Roy heard her breath catch, and his entire being hung in the balance between reaction and response.

Riza kissed him again, and he discovered that his worthless eyes could still feel the sting of tears.


End file.
